


Pain is a subjective term

by Gavi



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, But just a tiny bit, Emotional Hurt, F/F, Fluff, Heartbreak, little dark, posie - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22476166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gavi/pseuds/Gavi
Summary: Penelope wanted to protect Josie at all cost. So what if she got hurt in the process? She was going to break up with the love of her life, but she knew it would end up hurting her more.
Relationships: Penelope Park/Josie Saltzman
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	Pain is a subjective term

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't watched tvd, Lizzie and Josie were kidnapped by a Siren in season 8.

There was a great chance she will see Lizzie in the twin’s room, which was something she wanted to avoid as much as possible. Just for today. This was hard enough as it is. She didn’t want to do this but she made herself take one step after the other. Penelope’s life would be much easier if Lizzie Saltzman was a bad person. For past few months she had stockpiled all the things she hated about that blonde witch in order to make herself more and more angry. But at the end of the day, no matter what happened, she realized she couldn’t wish Lizzie’s death. Her life would be so much easier if she could.

Spying on people was supposed to be fun. She thought she could find out others’ secretes, and use that for blackmail or just for laughs. Josie would not have liked that, but she knew she would convince her eventually. She knew how to. But instead of all that, she found out something that made her blood run cold. She found out about the merge. She considered telling Josie, she wanted to, she ought to, but she couldn’t. It’s better to come from her parents.

She knew how Josie would react. Josie would try to find a way to avoid it. But her mother was already on it. She had been on it for years. Jo’s parents had connections with some of the greatest witches, werewolf’s and even vampires. There was also a rumor that Jo and Lizzie’s mother had an affair with Hope Mikelson’s father. If that was true then by this point, they would have found a way to avoid the merge. But Jo’s miter was still searching. It meant only one thing. There was no way out of it. which meant either Lizzie was going to kill the love of her life, or Jo was going to kill her twin and would have to live with that guilt for the rest of her life.

If Jo survived, Penelope would do anything, absolutely anything to make sure she was fine, that she wasn’t buried under the burden of guilt. She would make her see she had no option; it wasn’t her fault. She would anything to make her happy. But she knew her girlfriend too well. Jo would sacrifice anything for her sister. Co-dependency was a deep, deep hole and her Jo was so far into it that Penelope didn’t knew how to get her out of there. She needed to figure that out.

Lizzie was just a strange can of worms that she didn’t even wanted to touch. Right after she had started going out with Jo, Lizzie had taken a sudden interest in her. Before that the only time they had talked was when the twins gave her a welcome tour. She knew very well that the only reason Lizzie was being interested in her all of a sudden was because she was going out with her sister. Lizzie for all good looks, could not flirt if her life depended on it. She would have laughed if she wasn’t so disgusted.

If you saw them from afar, the Saltzman twins, arms linked together, talking in sync with one another, huge smiles on their faces, all cheerful and preppy, you would wish you were friends with them. Penelope did too. But if you look closer, you would see that Lizzie was so loud, so bright and sparkly, and took up so much space that there wasn’t anything left of her sweet, kind jo. Lizzie wasn’t evil, no but she was arrogant, disrespectful, dismissive, and she genuinely, truly believed she should be the center of attention in every situation. She would do anything to gain it. once she told everyone she was kidnapped by a siren when she was three years old. And her sweet, sweet Jo had backed up her sister. Swearing up and down it was true. That was when Penelope decided she needed to protect her love from her selfish twin.

Still, no matter what, being bad at flirting, telling badly constructed stories and even trying to steal your sister’s girlfriend made her a good target for gossips and pranks, it didn’t make her someone worthy of dying. To her disappointment and relief Lizzie was the only person in the twins’ room when she finally reached there. Penelope knocked on the door. “About time” Lizzie said turning around to look at her. She had her usual annoyed look on her face, it got even worse as she saw it was Penelope. “You. What do you want?” She said. How can someone managed to sound so disgusted? “Josie” she said plainly. “Want her to kiss your boo boo?” Lizzie said as turned away, going through pages of a very neatly colour coordinated binder. “Excuse me?” Penelope said as she took a step into the room. “You should look into a mirror” Lizzie didn’t even bother looking up. Penelope opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again and said, “Do you know where she is?” She ignored her nails digging into her palms. “If I knew I wouldn’t be doing this alone would I now?” She said. Then she turned around once again with the exact sane look as before. “Uh, you are still here? Go! And if you see Josie, tell her she is late”

Penelope considered using incendia but decided she was going to make a mess of things as it is. It was rare that Jo would hide from her twin but it did happen. If that was the case Penelope looked where to look. She would go to the shed in the backyard after that. She wanted to get his over with but she also hoped she would never find Jo. So she would never have to hurt her.

There were some moments with Jo so magical, so precious. Jo had the rare ability to take magic from something and make it her own. She was a very talented witch. She could literally siphon magic out of her with a kiss and make sparks fly. She remembered when they had first kissed, in the middle of the night, as their lips touched, she felt her magic flood from her core to Jo’s. In that moment, surrounded by ancient artifacts from Salvatore library all filled with magic, all making Jo buzz with it, she felt her own essence mixed with her love’s. In that moment and from every moment after that every moment they touched; she could feel herself becoming one with Jo. Despite all her Cynicism, all her pessimism, Penelope could get high in the sunshine and light Jo carried with her everywhere. And in all of that beautiful exterior and interior of this marvelous girl, deep down inside she felt a spark of something else. It was in the look Jo sometimes had, that stare, and then in the next moment it was gone. She saw it every time Jo did incendia with so much power and with such an easy, like she had been doing it since she was a toddler. And then it was gone again, taken over by her light. 

In the beginning every moment away from her felt like agony. She use to count minutes until she could see Jo again. Until they could shut out the world and become one for a while. Then it became a part of her life. She got use to Jo, use to being so extremely happy, and then one night she read what principle Saltzman has written.

That night Jo has asked her what’s wrong half a dozen times. Penelope couldn’t even remember what excuse she gave her. All she remembered was the kiss. All she remembered was being connected to Jo, of sharing her magic with her, of becoming one and she had suddenly broken off the kiss. It gave her goosebumps in a very, very bad way. When Jo had asked what’s wrong. Penelope had laid back on the bed, patting the empty space next to her. “Nothing’s wrong Jojo, just... come here”. Josie complied. Penelope listened to the sound of her breathing, any other day it would have calmed her but that night she was overwhelmed with fear and panic.

Jo wasn’t in the library. She was going to go to the backyard next but before that she needed to fix her mascara. She wished Lizzie was Jo’s evil twin. A monster pretending to be her sweet sister. She wished she could show Jo how horrible her sister was, paint her as the villain, someone who deserved to die, and killing her would be the right thing to do. She wished Lizzie would do something that would make that spark in Jo light up brightly, so that when the merge comes, Jo will not hold back. She there was a big bad evil witch to fight, but there wasn’t. when it came to the merge, despite being more powerful, Jo would not over power her sister. Penelope didn’t want Lizzie to die, but there was no other option. She had to die. Jo needed that spark ignited in her, to realize she didn’t need her sister, she didn’t need anyone. That was the only was she was going to survive. So, Penelope was going to be the evil witch in Jo’s story.

After she fixed her mascara, she made her way to the shed. Jo was sitting there, looking into the distance, her back to Penelope. Trying to find some peace from her sister’s craziness. Penelope was about to ruin that peace.

She might never kiss Josie again. That was fine I was worth it. Josie might never talk to her again, she might hate her for the rest of her life. That was fine too, because Josie was worth it. Hurting her now was just the beginning. She couldn’t stop here. She would need to keep on doing it, for months, probably for years. All while pretending, she was unaffected by it. She might push Josie so far away they might never be able to reconnect. Breaking Josie’s heart right now could mean lousing her forever. It was worth it. Every time she would hurt Jo, she would be hurting herself more. All that pain would be worth it when in six years, Jo would be alive and happy without the guilt of taking her sister’s life drowning her. For Josie’s life she would gladly sacrifice her heart. Pain is a subjective term. She could live through any amount of pain, because no amount of pain could ever come close to the pain of lousing her Jo to death. She thought she might die as well if that happened. So, she was protecting herself from the pain that might come in the future. Compared to that, what she was about to endure was nothing.

So, she took a deep breath and gathered up the courage to break up with the love of her life.


End file.
